


My Backwards Walk

by Oxbridge_Grey



Series: My Backwards Walk [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Biblical References, Disobeying Orders, Gen, I’m asexual so I’m not writing anything raunchy ever, Politics, Post-Canon, Power Play, Swearing, absentee god, angel oc’s, fake smiles, workplace tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-11 06:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oxbridge_Grey/pseuds/Oxbridge_Grey
Summary: The Apocalypse has failed to occur, and heaven and hell have to get on with whatever it was that they got on with before.But after 6,000 years of build-up, Gabriel doesn’t deal with failure well, and trys to find out what it is he’s going to do with himself in the next era of reality. Whether it’s good or not.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I got tired of everyone writing Gabriel as being a nice angel, so I’m going to write him as being the prick he is. Taking inspiration from The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin, any of Armando Iannuci’s stuff anyway, though thats a high bar and there’ll be less swearing at least.
> 
> This is my first story Ive not co-written with anyone, and the first one I’ve ever shared online. I’ve been writing and rewriting it for a month or so now, so I hope nobody minds me posting slowly.
> 
> Thank you in advance 🙏

After Armageddon didn’t happen, many other things had to happen in quick succession.

Gabriel had to return, and break the news through gritted teeth. He’d been met with the usual:

“Why not?”

“What happened?”

“What are we supposed to do instead?”

“Where do we go now?”

And Gabriel had had to repeatedly answer, and with more deep rooted frustration each time:

“I don’t fucking know! go back to whatever it was you were doing 11 years ago.”

Those 24 hours had Heaven seeing the most anger thrown around in all of it’s eternal years, coming from everybody - but primarily from Gabriel himself. He’d seethed quietly, and barked orders and kept on a smile that caused every other angel to keep their distance if they knew what was good for them. All apart from the other Archangels, who shared his fury and quietly smiled with him as they thought of what to do with the Angel on everybody’s minds, the one named Aziraphale.

It was a rather difficult thing, when the thing that you had prepared for for 6,000 years was torn from your grasp, and since Angels were Angels, and they couldn’t be the ones to incite war with Hell, (lest they be unrecognised as Angels afterwards) they could only place their anger on another Angel. Since Angels punishing Angels was permitted. And they were going to expend every ounce of fury they had on him.

Then the Angel they cast their fury on spat it back at them, and turned to leave with his hands behind his back as he thoughtfully considered returning to his bookshop, or what wine to try next, or whatever it was the traitor thought of in his spare time. Gabriel had glared at the back of the pricks cream coloured suit and had imagined plunging a sword through it. If a fire couldn’t do anything, perhaps some force was required? But he had hesitated, and now he had lost his chance. And tracking an Angel down to earth to stab him yourself rather than following the usual rules would set a bad example.

Everything would be better once the traitor had been punished right? They could feel better about it all and move on. But no. Aziraphales leaving had resulted in vats of frustration not being emptied. Their solution had simply said “nah” and turned away. And suddenly, there was nothing left to do, nothing that could be done. No solutions.

“Letting go,” wasn’t quite so simple for Gabriel, the Third Archangel, Guardian of the Holy Land, who resided over all the Powers of Heaven. Raised to thwart evil at every turn, and in charge of realising heavens victory in the interests of the all mighty lord.

Gabriel had always been the most volatile of the Archangels for this reason, born to be the warrior amongst them, the schemer who pitted enemies against each other so that they would destroy themselves before the Angels even reached them. Angels forgave him for his nastier personality traits, for God had given them to him, and they were used for these warring purposes. He was perhaps the only angel who was allowed to deceive. His fake smiles had most definitely passed on to other angels repertoire of expressions, but he had been the inventor. For thousands of years he had helped keep angels in check along with Michael, and he’d defended the Holy land and prepared an exemplary army for Heavens defense when the time came.

The time that had come and passed, the army that would never be used and was now reduced back to chaperoning dull humans on to their immortal lives. A fight that would never happen. Schemes that would never be put into play.

The chess board might as well have been knocked out of his hands, pieces scattered to the floor and skittering so far away that Gabriel would never find them, and the chess-board-knocker told him he needn’t bother either.

After Aziraphale had walked out, Gabriel had returned to his office, he had sat down carefully in his chair, stared ahead and clasped his hands over his desk. Everything he had been promised for 6,000 years slipping from his grasp with no explanation. He was Gabriel, he was made to be perfect by definition. Failure was unacceptable.


	2. Poke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel thinks. Which Angels don’t normally encourage.

“Lets begin then.” Metatron spoke in a soft and almost bored voice, but such was the nature of gods scribes voice that all the Archangels around him could hear every nuance of his words in precise detail. It never failed to be unnerving when the guy was sat on the opposite end of his long white table and could be heard like he was inside your ears. Seeing him was a privilege that few got, but Gabriel didn’t exactly treasure it. All of the Archangels sat along this long table, Michael on one end with the door to Heaven behind her, and Metatron on the opposite end with a white veil filling the wall behind him. Nobody knew where the veil led, nor ever asked. The angels all sat closer to Michael then Metatron, the leading 7 sat down and any other archangel welcome to huddle behind them, leaving a good half of the table as space for the scribe of God.

Metatron himself was slowly turning a page of large white paper, mouth quivering thoughtfully as he read his own words. Behind the man on a delicate pedestal, stood a black headed Ibis. It regarded them all carefully.

Though the higher Angel had said they could begin, they all waited for the scribe himself to speak first, an unspoken rule. Therefore it took another minute or so before he did actually speak. “Bugger.”

“Aziraphale has gone unpunished.” Michael stated quickly, seeming keen to break the silence.

“I can see that.”

“And I can confirm that I watched the Demon Crowley survive the Holy water, and he is also at large.”

“Hm,”

“We need to find a new weapon.”

“There are none Michael.” Metatron replied, finally looking up and placing his papers down. He wove his fingers together and cocked his head with a weak smile. Somehow the Ibis seemed to mimic him. “We can assure you of that.”

“Perhaps there is something we need to invent?” Michael cocked her head in retaliation.

“Perhaps we need to help Aziraphale see the light again?” Raphael suggested brightly, he was very alike to Aziraphale in personality, but not so much in appearance. He was tall and handsome in the traditional muscular sense. His cheekbones were sharp and his skin held a dark tan.

“Fuck off Raph,” Gabriel muttered under his breath, looking down at the table in restraint.

Unbeknownst to him, Metatron glanced at him and seemed to suppress a chuckle. “I think the principality is beyond healing Raphael, he seems convinced that he doesn’t require healing. So there’s nothing you can do. Though you’re kindhearted thoughts have been noted.”

Raphael looked so downcast that the world might’ve ended there and then. “He’s that lost?”

“I wouldn’t sweat it Raphael, he’s basically a demon already,” Gabriel replied with a quick smile.

The other angel seemed to brighten a little. “Oh, I see.”

“Then we should at least let him fall,” Sandalphon interrupted, he wasn’t one of the seven but still an Archangel in his own right so he’d been stood behind Gabriel. He stepped forward now, leaning a hand on Gabriels chair, looking between The two leaders at each end of the table. “Nobody’s fallen for 6,000 years, perhaps it's time for us to let at least one more Angel fall. We can’t leave him being half-in half-out. We don't want him coming back up here!”

“I would be happy to settle for at least that if God would grant me that power again.” Michael agreed, looking up at Metatron.

“‘Fraid not.” Metatron muttered looking back at his pages.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

“I beg to differ, you’re exactly who we have to ask.”

Metatron cleared his throat and shrugged again, tilting his head to read a particularly interesting excerpt of whatever was in front of him. Michael pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes wide open and muttered something. Metatron quickly responded, but didn’t seem offended. “No you won’t.”

“Well lets forget Mr.A Z fucking fell,” Gabriel began, standing up and deciding it was his turn to direct the meeting. “We’ll start the war anyway, cut out the middle man! Let’s strike hell down before they strike us.”

Sandalphon quickly started clapping and he heard another angel say “Ohh! I like that idea!” Gabriel beamed.

“Nooo,” Michael drew it out like a mother stopping all discussion before the children started throwing peas.

That wasn’t what Gabriel had expected, he was supposed to toss out the only suitable option and then that was the meeting done. “Why not?”

“That’s not what an angel  _ does  _ Gabriel.” Metatron finished.

“This is our everlasting war with Hell we’re talking about right?”

Michael had her eyes closed. “No matter what war we’re talking about, angels aren’t the ones to initiate conflict.”

Gabriels head snapped from one end of the table to the other and back again. “But we’re sitting ducks here.” He sputtered, raising both hands. “Surely you know that.”

“I thought you were in charge of our security Gabriel.” Michael drawled, looking up at him in slight amusement. “I’m very disappointed if that’s your opinion of your own defenses.”

Gabriel flinched but lent in harder over the table. “But Hell doesn’t care about the rules, they’ll attack us within the month, but if we strike firs-“

“Have you heard about any attacks incoming Gabriel?” Metatron raised an eyebrow. “Takes a while for an army to arrive, especially a huge, “somehow unnoticed by your scouts” one.”

He couldn’t lie, he hadn’t seen a single sign, no matter how many times he trawled over the data. “No but I don't  _ need  _ to hear about it to know that Hell is just rallying its forces  _ right now _ !”

“We’re not going to attack hell Gabriel,” Michael seemed as disinterested as Metatron now.

“Why not?! We were promised a war and we should get one! We can strike them down and end it once and for all.” He smiled as he heard murmurings of agreement from the angels around him, bolstering his confidence. “6,000 years of caretaking we were promised, with a final war as a reward afterwards. Well we’ve done our jobs, and we’ve done them well right? So what if some kid didn’t do as he was told. We shouldn’t need permission to do what’s right! Especially not from the son of the enemy!”

The murmurings were raising to little cheers and Michael could feel the shift of power in the room. She made to intervene “Unfortunately-“

“How long are we going to let hell have it’s way?” Gabriel ploughed on. “We’ve let those creatures exist and cause mayhem on earth for all this time. But it’s our job to remove their sins, are we just going to keep removing and removing without ridding earth of the source? We should cleanse the earth- and return it to the way God intended it to be!”

“Do I need to put you on a fucking leash Gabriel?!” Michael snapped, standing and planting a palm on the table. As she stood, Gabriel sat, shocked by the sheer force of her outburst. The room went completely silent, and Michael continued. “We’re not attacking Hell. We don’t strike first. Under any circumstances.”

The woman turned her head slowly and nodded to Metatron. “Excuse my language.”

The scribe nodded back, the Ibis (alarmingly) ruffled its six wings and croaked.

Gabriel was sat in stunned silence and eventually realised that Michael had in fact imposed her will on him. It wasn’t easy recovering from being shut up by the chief of Angels. She slowly sat down again and he looked at her with the grimmest scowl he could muster. He only received the faintest look of apology.

“Our first duty is to the defense of humanity. We’re not going to wipe humanity out because we got a little impatient. As soon as Hell  _ does  _ attack us. And I mean, real physical army on the horizon kind of attack. Then by all means.” She smiled a little. “I’d love to.” The frown returned in full force. “But until that time. Remember your place.”

The rest of the meeting ran quietly. Nobody really wanted to voice their opinions anymore, even if their mood grumbled just below the surface.

By the time they’d all left, Gabriel was waiting outside the door. Michael was the last out and she sighed without looking round at him. They waited briefly until it was clear to the other Archangels that they wanted to be left alone. Then Michael made sure to speak first. “What is it then Gabriel? I knew I wouldn’t get away with it without a thorough… “Bollocking” afterwards.”

The other Archangel paid no heed to her tone and marched up close to her, leaning right in and whispering angrily even though the door was closed. “Yeah what the FUCK Michael?”

“Don’t you swear at me Gab-”

“Excuse me Michael but I thought you  _ wanted _ to take down Hell once and for all with me? I recall you getting all charged up and excited about the war- shit last week we sparred and don’t think I didn’t notice you using the most ancient and righteous fucking sword you own? And then where were you then? What the hell Michael?!”

“What do you want me to do Gabriel?” Michael spun around to look at Gabriel directly and he was taken aback a little by her sympathetic look. “I see you’re ready to bulldoze into doing your job but you’ve forgotten that MY job is to keep you in  _ fucking _ line! And that includes not being the initiator of conflicts.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at her and began walking around her, she stared ahead, not intimidated by the fact that he was about a head taller then her. “We don’t initiate conflict no…” He drawled.

“Gabriel what are you-”

“But if we were to-”

“Gabe stop-”

“-Juuuust give them a little-”

“Gabe so help me-”

“-Push then perhaps they-”

“No! Gabriel!” She finally turned her head to look at him with a gaze of fire. But he was ready to retaliate with just as much fire.

“My work also includes getting Hell to fucking turn itself inside out if I want it to-”

“You sabotaged human regimes. And yes maybe Hell has an IQ similar to that of pond-life but I doubt you could actually hack it-”

“If I was made to sabotague then I’m the best fucking guy for the job!”

“That’s still INITIATING conflict! And I won’t condone this!”

“For the love of-”

“Gabriel!” She yelled, pulling closer and jabbing a finger to his chest. “The only reason you didn’t mention this first thing in that meeting was because you  _ knew _ it would never be allowed. Using sabotage to take down human groups that have gone astray is one thing but Hell is another business entirely.”

“I don’t know if you remember,” Gabriel growled. “But you were the one to shut me up in that meeting before I could  _ get _ to mentioning it.”

“Because-!” Michael hesitated and took a quick breath. “Gabriel. Gabriel… I do value you. And you can trust me when I say I don’t want to lose you. No truth twisting, or anything.” They both lost the tension in their shoulders, Michael opening up and Gabriel seeming surprised and confused.

“Well yes I… We’re angels we don’t lie, you… I mean… We’ve always trusted each other right?”

“For eons, yes.” Michael replied with a smile, but it faltered and she looked away. “I’m sorry Gabriel I… This job. Do you know how often I have to look at an Angel and… mistrust them briefly, to scrutinize them and figure out if they’re actually doing everything an angel should?” Gabriel blinked and was watching Michael very carefully. She smiled up at him and continued. “That’s  _ my _ job, I keep everyone in line.” She realised her finger was still on Gabriels chest and she carefully moved it to smooth out his tie. “I didn’t want you talking in front of Metatron like that if it escalated. Because I knew if I did ever get that power to cast angels down again, I didn’t want to ever have to do it to you. Ok?”

There was a moment's pause, Gabriels mouth felt very dry, but eventually he nodded and spoke softly. “Ok… Ok.”

“Yeah…”

“Right.” He stepped back and touched his tie again with his own hand, looking at the ground. “I’m sorry I…”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s what you need to concern yourself with. And perhaps you could dismantle Hell by yourself if you really wanted to.” She chuckled and Gabriel joined in, but both sounded empty. “Just uh… Don’t think about it again. We need you here Gabriel not… not anywhere else.”

Gabriel grunted in response, he was looking down but was imagining somewhere much further down. “I didn’t realise you could… Right…”

She watched him carefully. But decided not to answer that particular thought. “I have work to do Gabriel. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

She slowly turned and walked away, leaving Gabriel to look at his shadow on the floor.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was an unusually quiet night in London. There was no rain, the air was still and the stars and moon shone through a cloudless sky. The result was a town that was chilled, swathed in soft blue light and the harsh yellows of street lights and a lonely taxi. The residual summer heat was slowly sucked out of the city stones, and the lack of any population could only be attributed to it being a monday night, when most people were still recovering from a sunday hangover.

In the middle of it all, on a soho street corner, an angel sat in his alcove of warmth and cushioned comforts. Bathed in orange light from antique light bulbs that had somehow never died out. It wasn’t unusual for Aziraphale to be an avid insomniac and night owl, he never needed to sleep, and preferred to spend every minute he had reading the never ending swathes of books that came pouring forth from the minds of humanity. The sheer volume of them could never be kept up with, even when you were still cherry picking the very best ones for hundreds of years, the job had only gotten harder as the population of earth -and therefore writers active- increased. But even now he knew there was no need for it, because he’d reread the works of Shakespeare hundreds of times. Tonight was purely for pleasure. Because when he wasn’t reading, he was anxiously staring ahead of himself, wringing his hands together and thinking every sound he heard could be an angel or a demon come to “collect” him.

Reading was distracting enough, because there was no use in worrying so much.

His next distraction was the sound of the door to the shop opening. He briefly looked up, he couldn’t see the door from where he was however. But the gentle sound of footsteps that obviously weren’t trying to be stealthy, and the sound of the door locking behind him again let Aziraphale know it could only be one person.

He smiled and went back to reading, letting Crowley saunter over and wordlessly collapse into the sofa opposite, draping himself over as many cushions as he possibly could. His sigh was the loudest thing in the silent shop.

“What brings you here at this hour?” Aziraphale piped up, carefully turning a page in his book. “Come to raid my wine stock?”

Face buried in a pillow the demon paused before sounding a curt, “Yeah.”.

“Brilliant,” the angel clipped his book shut and hopped to his feet. “I’d been looking for an excuse.”

The scene was slow and careful. Though Aziraphale muttered quietly to himself and Crowley was so relaxed on the sofa he was practically sinking into it, there was still a palpable layer of tension in the air. They were both still recovering, their respective “trials” had only been about 2 days ago.

Eventually Aziraphale returned, with two glasses of red wine poured. He stood silently by the sofa till Crowley slowly shifted his legs out of the way and sat up with extreme delay to take his own glass. “What’s this?” He murmured as Airaphale sat down carefully beside him.

“An Australian Shiraz, Coco Rotie, modern but I’ve heard good things, so I thought we could give it a try tonight. It may never have existed if the apocalypse had gone through.” The bottle in question was slowly placed on the coffee table in front of them, it had the image of a smiling monkey with a golden tooth and a crown.

“Australian? Doubt they know what they’re doing,” He began, but after giving it a taste he raised his eyebrows and went silent.

The angel smiled and raised his glass, tasting his own. They knew their agreement without having to voice it.

The wine was a winner.

“So, Crowley. Having trouble sleeping?”

“... Yeah,”

“Unusual,”

“Mm,”

The silence persisted, Crowley seemed content now as they sat pressed up to each other on a couch with plenty of room on each side. But eventually the silence welcomed imagined sounds and Aziraphale decided he wanted to delve deeper into this anyway.

“Thinking about uh… You never actually told me what happened at… “my” trial?”

Crowley scoffed and shook his head. “The angels were motherfuckers, what more is there to say?”

“Yes they are… rather…” Aziraphale had broken his rule on swearing during the apocalypse, but he couldn’t bring himself to call the archangels motherfuckers, even though they were. Finally being allowed to hate the people that had abused him for years was still a work in progress.

“Not joking, Gabriel literally called himself ‘Archangel motherfucking Gabriel -  _ sunshine _ ,”

Aziraphale chuckled “That’s quite an introduction!”

Thankfully now Crowley felt free to continue without encouragement. “I mean who the hell does he think he is? Speaking like that. He’s not  _ heavenly _ at all he might as well be one of my lot.”

“Not your lot, hells lot.”

Crowley smiled briefly after being reminded. “Yeah, but- how does Gabriel get around acting like that? He’s so rude I don’t get it.”

“He’s the whip,” Aziraphale muttered, swilling the wine around his glass. “Carrot and stick, God and Michael are the carrot and Gabriel is the stick. Though Michael casts you down so she could also be a stick… She doesn’t get rude, though she can be scary so… Gabriel’s just… Just, uhh…”

“Are you… drunk already?”

“No I just haven’t really voiced these thoughts before. Generally Gabriel can be as nasty as he likes and we just accepted it, I’ve never really thought about it much more than that.”

“Not even when he’s rude to you specifically?”

“No I just… tried not to irritate him again. He was a Cherubim, and I was just a Principality-”

“He’s a Cherubim? I thought he was just an Archangel?”

Aziraphale slowly turned to look at Crowley. “Yes… Most Archangels are also something else, it’s just a title.” Crowley’s expression didn’t change and the angel narrowed his eyes. “You remember what the titles  _ mean _ right? Though, you have been out of heaven for a very long time.”

“Not sure I really understood it before either.” Crowley muttered with a shrug.

“Well,” Aziraphale began. “Stop me if I’m telling you something you already know. But Archangel is just a title to mean that you’re in charge of something. First and foremost you are the angel with powers God gave you, which can also be upgraded and downgraded later, so they’re also variable titles and it’s terribly confusing.”

“Uh-huh,”

“So Gabriel for example, was made as a Cherubim, defender of Eden, then areas of Jerusalem and heaven itself. He defends things, and he is the Archangel of defenses and so forth. Typically Cherubim class traits. He commanded over the Cherubims that resided over the garden, including myself. I was a Cherubim as well when we first spoke.”

“So you had four wings and four heads?”

Aziraphale scoffed at the somewhat personal question. “W-well in my true form yes, I could do that, and technically I still can? There was never a reason to downgrade me after the garden, the power god shares is limitless so they never had to remove those privileges from me to share them with other angels.”

“Except for now?”

The angel was hesitant. “Yes… Except for now. I’ve not heard or… felt anything on that yet.”

The demon decided it was time to change the subject. “So Gabriel, originally a Cherubim. Michael?”

“You don’t know what powers Michael has?”

“Well.” The demon cocked his head and frowned.

The angel huffed again. “Seraphim. Six wings. Uriel is also of that order.”

“Raphael?”

“Virtue, Archangel of healing, miracles. He’s in charge of who gets what miracling powers.”

“Yeah I know what a Virtue is.”

“Right, right.”

“... That short fat fella?”

“Sandalphon? He was originally a human who grew to become an angel.”

“Pff really? I thought he was a dick?”

“Yes, he...  _ punched _ me last week.”

“... I’ll kill hi-”

“No you won’t, we don’t want anything more to do with them.” Aziraphale scolded. “His brother Metatron, he’s a nice enough fellow, though not very willing to listen to any reason beyond his own… He’s a seraphim, and outranks his brother many times. That might be why Sandalphon follows Gabriel around so much, without being close to Gabriel, Sandalphon doesn’t really rank anywhere next to his brother, which could be frustrating.”

“So, ranking among angels is still just as confusing as I always thought it was.”

Aziraphale looked like he was going to object but after a moment lowered his wine glass. “Yes, yes it’s terribly confusing. Was Hells any better?”

“In hell your ranking only depended on how much presence you commanded in any given room. If you were loud enough, a lowly demon could overpower one of Beelzebubs ideas. But then of course she’d kill you.”

The angel raised his eyebrows. “... Huh.”

Crowley raised his glass. “To not being there anymore.”

Aziraphale smiled and nodded, raising his own glass and finishing it off.

“So if pretty much anyone can gain the title of Archangel if they’re in charge of something.” Crowley mused. “Couldn’t you become Archangel of Books?”

Aziraphale burst out laughing. “Ha! Perhaps. The Archivists there didn’t really like me though. Heaven doesn’t really care all that much for fiction. Just collecting facts and truths. If I was granted Cherubim powers at first they’d say I’m wasting those talents in a library. They’d be pushing me into the militant aspects of heaven with no consideration of what I liked or was actually talented at.”

“Well then they’re missing out.”

The Angel beamed. “Yes they are. Anyway, I wouldn’t much like being an Archangel, I’m perfectly happy down here. I dread to think of what they’re doing right now. Rushing about like headless chickens up there… Wondering what to do next. Do you think Hell will do anything?”

“That lot? No… I bet most of them are happy to go back to being lazy and pulling pranks. The angry ones will take it out with their… normal torturing… And then the rest of them are cowards who aren’t interested in proving anything with a war.”

Aziraphale slowly looked at Crowley with a hint of horror. “They- we’re- That’s rather like-”

“You’re not a coward Angel.” Crowley scoffed, shaking his head as if it were ridiculous. “You fought, you fought to not fight, you stood up to Gabriel.”

The angel slowly smiled and interrupted. “ _ We _ did. You’re not a coward either Crowley.”

The demons lips twitched into an embarrassed smile and again he changed the subject. “So if you’re a Cherubim and Gabriel is an Arch-Cherubim, who would win in a fight?”

“Crowley! I’m not fighting Gabriel, under any circumstances. Even with my sword I have no doubt he’d destroy me.” He retorted aghast, quickly pouring another glass of wine.

“What about me?”

“What about you? Fighting me or Gabriel?”

“What the- Gabriel! Of course!”

The angel fidgeted in his seat. “... Under no circumstances. You’re not fighting Gabriel. Not without me.”

The demon smiled again and looked at nothing in particular. “I can’t fight like a Cherubim.”

“... No”

“But you…?”

“Crowley do I _ look _ like a Cherubim right now?”

The demon looked over at the angels tartan bowtie, frazzled hair and soft demeanor. “Yes,” He grinned at the desired effect of the mans cheeks flushing and huffing as he looked for words in his short circuiting brain.

“This conversation is ridiculous Crowley. Remember that Gabriel is THE soldier, God’s first soldier?”

“If he came here again, I’d fight that bastard.”

The angel took a moment to pat down his clothes. “M-... Me too. Don’t you dare fight him without me.”

“If you say so Angel.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gabriel stood leaning on a large table in his office. Still digesting the warning Michael had given him. Polite, but a warning none the less.

It was a spacious and bright room, one door, two long walls covered in files, and Gabriels desk at the end with a wide window out to heaven behind him. It was neither rectangular nor square, it was simply “spacious” in any direction you looked, until you decided you wanted to pick something from the bookcase, or look out of the window, when the walls would finally come closer to you.

The table Gabriel lent on in the centre had only recently been moved in. It was made of marble, with details in gold and black, depicting in precise detail a map of earth and the worlds around it, the details changing in real time and somehow, impossibly, shifting so that you could see the whole globe and other dimensions at any one time, yet still remain a flat table. Of course you needed all 8 eyes to see it properly. Hundreds of rose coloured marble figures of angels and obsidian demons waited in a pocket dimension to populate the battlefields. But were… unused.

It had been completed and arrived in his office right as he’d returned from telling everybody that the war wasn’t happening, but of course the marble worker hadn’t known that.

He supposed he should have the table removed now that there wasn’t going to be a war but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Having it would only remind him that it wasn’t happening, so he should remove it so that he wouldn’t be tempted. He raised his fist carefully, thinking that perhaps he could trick himself into smashing it, but his hand just hung in the air weakly wavering up and down as his tired thoughts circled. Eventually he just put both hands on the table and lent his full weight on it with a sigh. “A fucking waste of time.”

He was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Gabriel?”

Looking up, he saw a tall woman with long black curling hair, adorned with a single white flower, dark skin and even darker eyes. But they were warm motherly eyes. She gave him a delicate smile. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

The Archangel stood up straight and gestured to the empty table. “Nothing at all. What is it Barachiel?”

“Well you see, I’ve got a problem with one of my guardian angels.” She began, walking inside and looking around as she spoke. “A young one, he’s particularly restless. Lots are but this guy- particularly.”

“And what can I do about that?” Gabriel began curiously.

She spun to look at him dramatically, raising her hands. “He asked to speak to you!”

“To me?”

Her hands went to her hips. “Yeah! Strange right? But he has some grievances.”

“Grievances? Who am I now? HR?”

“That’s would be AR, Angelic Resources.”

Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “Whatever- Barachiel…”

“Right- Anyway his name is Benjamin-”

“Benjamin? What kind of an angels name is that?”

“Gabriel, do I have to remind you that guardian angels are named by their wards?”

“Right, right. Human name.”

“Exactly. Benjamin was only born about 70 years ago, to protect a soldier I believe. So Benjamin was the choice. Anyway he’s been acting up, throwing things, yelling things and so forth. He said he had some things to say to you so I thought it would be best if you could see how you could deal with him.” When Gabriel narrowed her eyes at her she continued. “He’s primarily a miracle worker, a healer. But you know… he  _ wants _ to be a warrior. He’s a bit childish about it but maybe if you gave him some time-”

“I’m not gonna be this teenagers personal trainer if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Of course not! You have better things to do than that. I’m just sayin’ hear him out, give him some words, find him a place in the military regiment to help out in, or find a general who’s willing to accept him into their classes for a bit.”

Gabriel signed and put his hands in his pockets. “Fine, fine. I get it. Where is he?”

The woman perked up and smiled. “He’s outside actually!”

“Oh, shit.” Gabriel muttered to himself, brushing his hair back with a hand and walking towards his desk. “So I didn’t really have a choice in this.”

“Nope! You’re such a good guy Gabe!”

“Gabriel, and that’s my job description yes. Good. Guy...” He replied curtly, he turned to look out the window and adopted his business look. “Why don’t you send him in then?”

“Of course! Benny!!” She bounced towards the door, he heard a few quiet words outside his office and then there were some delicate steps on the floor, followed by the sound of the door closing.

The archangel gave his usual hesitation, his thoughtful demeanor, and then turned with a dazzling smile. “Benjamin! Wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir Gabriel!” The angel stood by the closed door was a scrawny one, with curled black hair, wide grey eyes and dark messy freckles. Angels were normally born looking at least 16-17 and would quickly age to a healthy 30 year old wisdom, but it looked like this Angel had been created at 14 and had only gained one or two years in his 70 year life, so to Gabriel he really just looked like a baby.

“Take a seat, son.” Gabriel gestured to a chair that materialized in front of his desk and moved towards his own seat.

The young angel hesitated, squinting at Gabriel a little, but eventually did as he was told. “I’m 74,”

“Yeah kid what’s the problem been? I heard you’ve been causing trouble.”

Ben frowned and tried to look angry but to Gabriel it was like looking at a puppy that had licked a lemon and was regretting it. But the angels choice of words quickly made things not so funny. “Yeah!! I have! What happened to the war we were going to be in Gabriel?! What happened?!”

He hadn’t been prepared for this. He  _ should’ve  _ expected this, but he hadn’t. His smile faltered a little. “Uhhh-”

The young angel stood up. “You messed up Gabriel! Why aren’t we fighting right now?!”

“N-now hold on,” Gabriel began, quickly feeling the irritation rise in him, as he rose to tower over the other angel. “ _ I _ messed up?  _ I _ did?”

“Who else messed up?! You’re the angel that takes care of war!”

“Hey kid I don’t think you understand-”

“I understand!”

“No you don-”

“Yes I do!”

“Kid, I’m not in charge like that, God has the final say-”

“And God said we had a war to go to!”

“Not right now, Michael has-”

“Michael has nothing to do with it!”

“Michael’s the chief of us all, If she has nothing to do with this then I don’t know what plane of reality you’re currently working o-”

“Why aren’t we destroying Hell right now Gabriel!?” The youngster pointed a finger over the desk at the elder. And Gabriel batted it away in sharp defense, gritting his teeth.

“The plans have changed pal, they’re not exactly in my control-”

“Then what  _ exactly _ is it that you DO control?!”

“WOULD YOU, SIT, DOWN!” Gabriel snapped, hitting the desk with one hand. The other angel planted himself immediately back in his seat and Gabriel ran a spare hand through his hair. “My- God! I- Christ-”

“Is everything ok in here?” Barachiel called through the closed door worriedly.

“Yes! Yes, sorry I-” Gabriel cleared his throat and slowly sat down. “Yes, sorry Barachiel.”

“O-Kay.” The door remained shut.

The archangel snapped his eyes back to the now terrified child, and he sighed. “Look, I’m no happier then you are-”

“You’re not?”

“WOULD you- just… let me finish a sentence here ok kid?”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Fine! Fine, bad choice of words, ok  _ pal _ . Look. God said we go to war after Armageddon. Armageddon didn’t happen for a number of myriad and nonsensical reasons- and so that means we don’t go to war, ok? God tells us when to go to war, not us, and they’ve said nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.” Gabriel asserted, going a little quieter. “Nothing at all…”

The two angels watched each other for a moment. Letting the silence settle their emotions.

“What if Hell attacked us?” Benjamin questioned.

“That would be a different story.” Gabriel replied with a nod. “We’d be allowed to retaliate. But… even then. If earth stands between us, not destroyed. Then we’d be guided to push Hell back to themselves, and then leave them down there to continue their dirty work till the next time they attack us, and so on and so forth.”

“So… it’ll never end?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hell will always exist, Heaven will always exist. We may or may not go to war at any one time, and it all sits in the hands of an almighty that won’t talk to us, or tell us why and will punish us for eternity if we decide we want more than that?”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes curiously at the boy. Part of him wanted to warn him,  _ Are you sure you want to be telling me this? Me? An Archangel who could get you banished? _ But another part of him… wanted this conversation. “Yes, we are immortal. We’ll keep existing to do that job. For eternity.”

Benjamin sighed. “I was so excited to finally get to do this war! We were promised it! Why do we have to be taunted like this? Don’t we do our jobs?”

Lots of this reminded gabriel of what he’d voiced earlier that day. So he remembered the responses. “We’re not to reason why Ben, we’re supposed to just... smile and get on with it.”

“That pisses me off.”

Gabriel didn’t tell the boy to mind his language, and peered around the room filled with his life's work and ambition. “... Me too.” There was more silence. “Listen…”

“Yeah?” The boy looked up hopefully.

Gabriel’s mouth hung open for a moment, suddenly a hundred thoughts were racing through his head. Especially, _ Is this a good idea?  _ “You… want to fight, why’s that?”

The boy sat up straight. “I was created to defend an indian soldier called Ajay during the final year of world war 2-”

“An indian named Ajay named you an english name like Benjamin?”

“Yes, I was his Devas. And Henamed me after a fellow soldier that had died.”

“Ok, that tracks.”

“Ajay was injured and had returned to a hospital in Kent, where I was charged to defend him from death by the spanish flu as he recovered from his battle injury. He was set to depart for war again, and I was ready to go with him when peace was declared. I celebrated with him and then had to come back here, since I only needed to defend him during the crisis, I got no glory at all!”

“Others would call that a lucky break-”

“The war was going to be epic!” The boy cried, standing from his chair, eyes gleaming. “All the festivities afterwards, all the soldiers coming back and partying! How brave they’d been! How many girls they got-”

“Girls? Now hold on kid-”

“Their amazing soldier suits and gear! Their medals!”

“Unfortunately angels don’t get medals, though I think they’re a good idea too-”

“I want to prove myself Gabriel! I can fight! I’m better than just curing people of the flu!”

“Yeah, alright, I get it kid sit down-”

“Not a kid!”

“Right right, sit down.” Benjamin sat and Gabriel couldn’t help but smile at the boy. “... How many other angels share your view?”

“Oh everybody’s talking about it.” Benjamin responded quickly.

“Right… We do too.”

“The Archangels?”

Gabriel inhaled sharply and wondered if this would set a good example. He decided he didn’t care. “Yeah… We do. But don’t go telling everyone else that.”

Benjamin smiled a little, Gabriel almost had to look away from the purity of it. “You fought in the first wars didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes we did.”

“You fought Beelzebub and Azazel-”

“Yes,”

“And Satan with his seven heads and serpent form-”

“A little exaggerated but yes.”

“And the leviathan-”

“That was Michael and Sandalphon, I was defending the garden at the time-”

“What’s it like being a Cherubim class Sir?”

Gabriel had to admit he always felt a bit better when he was referred to as Sir, especially from somebody looking up to him as much as this. But things had started to feel uncomfortably personal. But he couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, yeah I get it so you want to do your part?”

“Yes sir!”

“Ok, ok…” Gabriel narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. The fact that so many angels were on his side about wanting to go to war was encouraging, he felt strangely proud of the angelic race as a whole. It was sad for all of them that they couldn’t get the justice that they wanted, though they couldn’t disobey Michael. They were all chained to that duty. But angels fundamentally were created to be perfect, and if this is what they wanted, then maybe it was his duty to help them?

The beginnings of a plan wormed into Gabriels head, a way to gently start the war without Michael knowing, a careful way to pull the strings. It was a plan but… If he was caught he could be cast down, was it a truly angelic plan? He WAS Gabriel, anything he did was angelic surely, and angels outvoted Michael and Metatron’s opinion a million to one. Maybe they were wrong? God hadn’t said yes but they hadn’t exactly said no either. The angels were alone.

“Benjamin.” Gabriel began quietly, hands clasped together and thoughtfully resting on his chin. “You’re a good- man. How about you go and… behave now. And… I’ll see what strings I can pull, to get you into the military field?”

Benjamin lit up like a child that had got top marks in all of their tests, which some would say he had. “Oh yes!! Yes! I mean, yes.”

Gabriel clapped his hands, he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. “Great! You go back to Barachiel now.”

“Uh, y-yes. Ok,” He stood and skipped towards the door, hesitantly waving and calling back. “Bye! Thanks Sir!”

“Don’t mention it.” Gabriel replied. He briefly saw the door open and glimpsed Barachiel hearing Benjamin’s first words; looking shocked; turning to give Gabriel a powerful thumbs up; and then the door had closed again.

Gabriel knew right away, he was going to use Benjamin somehow. He would train the boy personally, or “train” as in, get him to do some odd jobs for him, to help his plans… Plans that Michael couldn’t know about, and plans that Sandalphon would be too loyal to God to partake in, so he couldn’t be trusted if things got a little… unangelic.

Doubt gnawed at him though, a faint semblance of fear. Gabriel wanted war with Hell more than anything, that was his life's ambition after all, to war with hell and win. He was an angel who could infiltrate, manipulate and conquer. The angels in Heaven wanted it too, and it was his duty to answer to them as well. He could slip into hell and give them the extra push they needed to finally invade heaven, surely they didn’t need  _ that _ big of a push anyway?

But if this messed up… he’d go to hell for good.

He needed some assurance.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even in heaven there was a church. It wasn’t by definition a “church,” the main one anyway, there were lots. But it wasn’t a church because it wasn’t Christian. It wasn’t Jewish or Muslim or Islamic. It was just  _ the _ church. Heaven had lots of places of worship that were made to look like the ones on earth of every religion, so everybody in Heaven could pray wherever they wanted to, if they felt like they still needed to pray. Heaven would accommodate everybody’s routines, even worship that wasn’t necessary to clear heaven dwellers of sin - if it made them happier. Though it was arguable that humans were still capable of falling into sin in heaven on a bad day, it was very complicated. Free will was extremely tiresome to keep track of on earth let alone all the already dead people, so if they could get the dead people to apologise, the angels were happy enough with that and didn’t bother with it further.

However the main “Church that wasn’t a church but you could call it whatever you wanted,” resided in the centre of heaven, but it was never a long walk if that was where you wanted to go, the roads would simply make it your next right or left turn. The air was always warm, so the flight there was the easiest flight an Angel would ever have to make, barely needing to flap a wing. Angels needed to pray even less than humans did, but this was a church where Angels really did “Sing from the rafters,” they enjoyed sharing their lunches here, sharing laughs, and answering humans questions if they were ever called up to. The Angels were extremely pleased when dress code had changed from robes to whatever they wanted to wear, so that they no longer needed to sit with their legs crossed for politeness if any humans looked up at the wrong time. Trousers were a heavenly invention, and pencil skirts worked well enough for the girls too.

Gabriel floated down to the church’s gates, folding his wings away neatly and walking inside without hesitation. It was quiet as it usually was in a place of worship, and Gabriel’s footsteps echoed around the space as he marched straight through the isles to the front bench. The place was tall and pretty, not adorned with much and entirely made out of a “slightly-too-white-to-be-normal,” stone. There was a central pillar with a small stone with rounded edges protruding from the ground. It was about half the height of a man, and looked somewhat like an unmarked grave. But everything about it felt so perfectly designed that nobody dared touch it. That when you looked at it you felt like everything made sense and worked. You couldn’t put your finger on why it felt so good to look at, and it was so hard to describe… So it was generally regarded as the focal point for all prayers to be heard. And it didn’t need an inscription to be recognised as special.

Gabriel glanced down at it with a look that could almost be regarded as incredulous.

Generally the Humans around looked surprised, and any Angels around looked curious at least. Angels didn’t pray because their social code read that an Angel wouldn’t need to be forgiven for anything, and if they needed an answer from God they could get it from asking any angels above them. If an angel went to pray they would be treated with suspicion at least, seeming as an angel might only come here to pray if they’d done something so bad they wouldn’t dare tell another angel about it, but since it was Gabriel, nobody dared stop him either.

He sat down on the front bench and gazed at it quietly. He wasn’t sure if he expected anything here, but Metatron wasn’t saying anything, and the last conclusion he could come to was that if anyone could get God to speak to them directly, he should be able to do it here.

“Alright,” He whispered quietly. “You know what I’ve been thinking about doing. Now’s your chance to stop me.”

He felt like he was being eyeballed by all of the angels in the rafters, but eventually they began to dwindle after about 20 minutes of nothing happening.

“Gabriel! Fancy seeing you here.”

The angel closed his eyes to prevent himself from rolling them. Peter’s voice was immediately recognisable and as usual was irritatingly cheerful. He turned his head just in time to smile at Peters approach. “Peter how are you?” he asked with just enough feigned interest to be polite.

“Doing delightfully well! Thank you Gabe,” He responded, sitting down (uninvited) right next to Gabriel, who was already sat at the end of the bench and couldn’t scoot away any further.

Peter was as elderly looking as you’d expect for a wise Saint. He had thinning, wispy, white, hair and bright eyes, but had shaved his beard recently. In fact that was only the start of his changes. He was wearing a cap backwards on his head, white converse sneakers, tracksuit bottoms and a bright green baseball jacket. He had a bunch of plastic, neon-coloured, woven bracelets around both wrists and some around his neck underneath the hoodie. One bracelet had what looked like a cross on it but that was the only thing that might single him out as looking “saintly”. He was eating from a packet of Maryland's Cookies and offered one to the Angel.

Gabriel ignored it. “What in Heaven are you wearing.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Do you like it?” He smiled, holding his arms up and grinning at himself. “Apparently it’s all the rage!”

“Spending time with dead kids again.”

Peter looked a little pained but kept smiling. He’d never liked using the ‘dead’ term. “We all enjoy finding out what’s happening on Earth these days Gabriel, and there’s nothing wrong with those whose lives were cut a little short finding out what they’re missing either.”

The saint was a strange one. While most people in Heaven kept to their own ways, Peter insisted on changing every decade so as to best welcome new people to Heaven in the most comforting way possible. He didn’t  _ have _ to welcome people to heaven, that was an angels job. But Jesus had a lot of faith in him and had given him a pair of symbolic keys of some kind that the other angels squinted at in confusion, because there was no lock on the front gate to heaven. So Peter was more like a frequent volunteer. And to be honest he was very popular among humans and angels because of it.

“Peter, why are you here? Isn’t your first church around here somewhere?”

The old man laughed. “I built that place by hand. When you know everything about how a place was built, it loses it’s “holy feeling”. All you can think about is where the rats had eaten through the bricks. And anyhow, as soon as I knew that this was the quote-unquote,  _ true place _ . Then of course I’ll just come here, I have no particular attachment to my old place.”

“Why  _ quote _ \- true place?” Gabriel inquired.

Peter lent in and whispered. Gabriel lent away. “Some people like their own places and there’s no point in hurting their feelings and arguing about it. Every place of worship is valid.” Peter smiled proudly like he’d accomplished something. “That’s a new term!”

Gabriel hated this man. The saint seemed immune to hatred though.

“Anyhow Gabriel, I hate to ask again but I’m really curious, what brings you down here?”

“Down here meaning, not with those pigeons?” The Archangel pointed up at his brethren. He could hear Angels disjointedly trying to learn a new hymn and laughing about forgetting the words more than actually singing. It sounded like a new pop song.

“Yes not with your... fellow Angels.”

Gabriel sighed and lowered his hand, squinting at Peter carefully. Though he hated the guy, it was probably easier to be honest with him then it was being honest with a bunch of gossiping Angels who couldn’t lie. As a human, Peter could at least tell a few white lies if he wanted to.

He looked back at the unmarked menhir. “Since Armageddon… Didn’t happen-”

“Thank God for that,” Peter murmured with a smile, gesturing a hand upwards that made Gabriel frown briefly.

“Y-yes, thank… God.” He cleared his throat and pushed the irritation away. “I’ve been a little unclear on what I’m supposed to be doing now. Metatron hasn’t given me anything.”

“Supposed to be doing… to battle with Hell?”

“Yes! Like that.” Gabriel looked up at Peter hopefully, like Peter had been the first one to actually understand what he wanted. “When do we next strike back?”

“We’re at Peace Gabriel, isn’t it wonderful?” Gabriels smile vanished. But Peter continued. “Hell doesn’t seem interested in attacking us right now, Earth is alive and well. Everything can continue as normal.”

“My normal is preparing for war,”

“And now you can go on a much needed holiday,”

“But… But Hell will try to strike us again. I need to know when that is so we can prepare to defend ourselves.”

“Do you always enjoy knowing everything in advance?” Peters hand was on Gabriels shoulder now and Gabriel was slowly trying to press himself further into the bench armrest.

“Yes thats… That’s how everything is, for an angel… We’re born knowing.”

“Hm I suppose so but… maybe there are no plans right now? Maybe God doesn’t… well God  _ knows _ , but maybe it’s so far in the future that they don’t want to bother you.”

Gabriel felt like he was looking at a chimpanzee. This had been a bad idea.

“I should… probably get going.” The angel muttered standing up.

“Look- look.” Peter stammered quickly, standing up and nodding his head in understanding. “I’ve known you for a long time.”

“You’ve known me for a third of existence.”

“Which is a long time!”

“Which is just a third of the ‘long time’ I’ve known.”

“Gabriel work with me here.” He patted Gabriels shoulder again and Gabriel stared at it like it had left a purple painted handprint on his immaculate suit. “What does your heart say?”

“Uh… Peter, I appreciate your…  _ words _ but-”

Peter had been thinking and decided to start from the beginning, paying no heed to Gabriel’s evasive maneuvers. “When you think to yourself, and seek out the one last voice inside your head. The one that you know hasn’t… been tampered with by anybody else, that isn’t affected by your current mood, or position or your environment. That voice is the voice God made you with. We believe that God puts it in us just before we’re born, I don’t know how it is with Angels or anything, but whatever you truly believe needs to be done, that’s what God made you to do, and if you always follow that you can’t go wrong.”

Gabriel blinked for a moment, maybe this monkey had a point.

“And that voice Gabriel. I’m sure it’s just telling you that everything’s peaceful and you can rest for a while.” Peter finished with a smile.

“Yeah…” Gabriel murmured. The voice inside him was telling him he wanted to destroy Hell, no matter what it took. The voice inside him was telling him to start some fucking trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “How many times have you had to repeat that shit to people both on earth and in heaven?”
> 
> Peter nodded and stared into the distance. “It’s like breathing now.”
> 
> ———————  
Thank you for reaching the end of chapter one! Now you can go and rest your eyes. UwU


	3. Acts of Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel infiltrates Hell, blackmails help, blinds a disciple and clips the wings of an old one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sat on my drive for a long while, I never quite felt like I’d written it correctly. It was important to get Gabriels first visit to hell right, I think I rewrote that 3 or 4 times with completely different scenarios, but it worked best keeping it simple. Yesterday I had a sudden idea about Azazel that finally helped put things into place. So I think it’s ready to post.
> 
> Excuse the Oc’s, I know I don’t like reading about Oc’s, so I only added them when necessary and I’ve tried to write them with some proper development.
> 
> It’s long again, lets just say that that’s always going to be a given!

Hell was a maze, but luckily that made it easier to blend in. An Angel could change their appearance at the flick of a wrist, so Gabriels face had shifted slightly and he’d whitened his hair. It was harder to remove the slight glow in his eyes, so he wore black contact lenses, which helped him look less human and more demonic. He’d stolen a large trench coat and hat he’d found as soon as he’d arrived, in the hope that it’s thick fabric, soaked in years of hell’s scent and general aura, would hide his holy one. But he soon realised he needn’t have bothered, hell was so jam packed with demons worrying about their own selfish businesses that his aura was easily downed out, and even if any demons had the attention span to care enough to look, he would be impossible to pinpoint.

He so wished he could return to his pure greys and light purples, but he quickly settled into wearing as much black and brown as possible. Grey was far too much of a signature of himself.

His first trip was just a scouting mission, he was going to test the water and nothing more. He would see how easy it was to get in and out unnoticed, who was what and where, and figure out if he could do anything with what he discovered. Getting in had proven easy, now he just had to hang around and figure out what made him suspicious and see how long he could last down there. He wasn’t going to go anywhere near any important demons yet. He knew Beelzebub well, he’d fought Satan and Azazel thousands of years ago so he could only hope he could still recognise them, and hope that they had found him insignificant enough back then that they wouldn’t still recognise him back.

Hell didn’t really have much organisation to it. In fact it only had the bare minimum of organisation that if you wanted to take somebody to a room for torture you could generally hold to the rule of “somewhere east,” and then eventually after passing a hundred unlabelled rooms with various purposes that would slowly get more and more disturbing, you’d find a spare room with a table and perhaps a dentists drill to get you started. Then you could proceed with whatever you could find available later.

Gabriel knew this much, and it wasn’t all that helpful. He kept wandering and still couldn’t quite make head or tail of where he was, he was thankful for the fact that he could teleport wherever he wanted, so there was no chance of him getting trapped there forever. Teleport wherever with the exception of straight back to heaven, hell at least had defenses for that sort of thing. Otherwise any demon or angel could break in at any time… though Gabriel hadn’t seen any guards where he’d snuck through, ironically it was easier to hide on foot then it was as an interdimensional being phasing through their material plane.

There were an odd number of libraries in hell, which Gabriel found amusing and somewhat ironic, and it seemed to answer a lot of questions when it came to Aziraphale’s tastes. He had a quick glance inside one, and noted that the books were all in different states of disrepair. He wouldn’t recognise the names of any books in particular by humanity, but none of the books looked educational or non-fictional in any sense of the word. He did recognise a shelf of books dedicated to nazi-esk propaganda, a human movement that had managed to reach his relm of attention, extremely fictional indeed and entirely inaccurate.

He passed a room of computers where a pile of demons were sorting through mounds of identical green wires, muttering about the internet connection. There were just as many demons with phones pressed to their ears and not saying anything, one demon had put their phone on speaker mode where the on hold music was playing Justin Bieber at crackling quality.

At least he seemed to be heading into a direction that seemed to contain lots of offices.

“Well I don’t know about you but I’m just as happy hanging around here a bit longer, no need to rush things.”

“But this was supposed to be the end, now when are we going to take heaven for ourselves?”

“We don’t know Hastur. His majesty hasn’t come upstairs since dealing with the boy.”

Gabriel recognised Beelzebubs voice immediately and stopped. Glancing to his left he saw a small smoggy room with a bunch of broken plastic chairs, a single broken computer in the corner with a hunched demon by it, a few other demons huddled around the walls or crouching on chairs that were somewhat sturdy, then three demons hanging more importantly in the centre. There were a few empty chairs in the centre too, possibly for demons that hadn’t bothered to turn up. While angelic meetings were over attended by eager workers who perhaps didn't need to be there, they just wanted to look like they were working - demonic meetings were underattended apart from the essentials who were dragged there, and the other demons in the room were completely useless, showing up again to make it  _ look _ like they were important, when they were really just room meat to fill up the space.

Beelzebub sat backwards on a chair that was rusted black, arms resting on the backrest with a storm of flies about her. She looked at a second demon sat with a toad on his head that Gabriel vaguely recognised and had been addressed at Hastur. The third demon in the room Gabriel didn’t recognise at all, she was dressed a lot like how St Peter had been dressed the day before, only with blonde dreadlocks, a mess of eyeshadow and clawed nails incessantly tapping away at a phone with a screen cracked like lightning. Despite the locks she was definitely white, though Gabriel only knew the bare minimum about that argument, it still helped him feel uneasy.

“Bunch of bullshit if you ask me.” Hastur muttered back. Gabriel was sidling up to the rooms entrance and lent himself inconspicuously in the doorframe, half in and half out of the meeting. Though he’d decided he was going to avoid the lords of hell, this seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

“Bullshit aside.” Beelzebub replied, raising a hand. “We have to wait to hear from him. And if anyone doesn’t listen to that… Well you’re practically roadkill as far as I’m concerned, any demon to attack heaven by himself is the dumbest prick of all.”

“Too riiiiiight.” The dreadlocked girl drawled past chewing gum, not looking up from her phone. The rest of the room was also muttering in agreement.

“Any idea when we might hear anything though?” Another demon perked up from the deepest corner of the room.

“Dunno I mean… His tweets seem pretty unrelated to the whole thing.”

Beelzebub rolled her eyes at the blonde. “Satan isn’t on twitter,”

“Oh yeah he is!” She chuckled with a grin, eventually dragging her eyes up from the screen and leaning in over Beelzebub. “And he has more followers than you do.”

“I’m not… I barely know what-”

“Exactly, I mean, Lucifer knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“We DON’T know when or if we’re going to hear anything.” Beelzebub made a point of looking up to speak to the rest of the room.

“What about Crowley?” A demon called from somewhere in the throng of demon bodys.

Beelzebub pointed to the blond girl. “What about Crowley?”

The blond held up a hand in a signal to wait and scrolled a timeline on her phone for a second. She grinned and chuckled before looking up. “What was that?”

“What about Crowley Azazel?” Beelzebub repeated without hesitation.

Ah, so that’s what Azazel looked like these days. Who’d’ve thought?

Realising that both Beelzebub and Azazel were both in this room in front of him made it dawn quickly that he could probably die here at any point. Beelzebub by herself he could possibly deal with, but putting a prince of hells name to the little blond had tripled the threat level in the room.

Said blond silently nodded and peered down at her phone again, she scrolled with one dainty plastic nail and lavishly showed her phone to Beelzebub. The prince of hell hissed and sat back repulsed. “Ugh the ritz again, gross.”

“This was taken about an hour ago, the angel ordered salmon meunière and a cheesecake for dessert.” The demon drawled.

“How do you know that?”

Azazel smiled at Beelzebub like she was a little child, held the gaze like she was going to answer and then looked back at her phone.

“Right well, still at large then.” Beelzebub muttered to the room.

“Can we resume torture?” Each demon took its turn asking Beelzebub their question.

“Yeah, yeah! Don’t  _ stop.” _

“Do we need to bring the antichrist here?”

“No we’ve cut ties with him. I don't know if we even could collect him.”

“Can we keep our weapons?”

“No.”

“Can I go back to living as Richard Sackler?”

“That’s up to you Mammon, you were doing a great job and it’s been fun to watch.”

“What if Heaven attacks us? What then?” Gabriel spoke up from the doorway, he made a point of not quite looking up all the way under his hat, and pushed his accent to have a slightly different twang to it. He was backed up by a mutter of the rest of the demons in the room.

“Angels don’t do that.” Beelzebub began, but was narrowing her eyes a little.

“That was before Armageddon…” Gabriel added, looking up into the room with his blackened eyes. He met the looks of the demons in the centre and hoped he was silhouetted enough against the light outside the door frame. A minor panic ran through him as he wondered if his voice was too recognizable, but he repressed it.

“Ted Danson might see something there since his laser eye surgery,” The blond girl spoke up, pointing a finger lazily and nodding at the other two demons. Her eyes were a vivid red with a purple ring around the edge of the iris, she must have contact lenses on too. Gabriel assumed he was this so called “Ted Danson,”. She continued. “I dunno ‘bout you guys but if a bunch of people get denied a cage fight to gamble on they’re gonna get rowdy. The rules change.” An agreement murmur went through the room again. It looked like lots of demons had no idea what was going on but wanted to look like they did. “Remember when that Wendys thing came up? There was this whole excitement around fast food mascots beating up other mascots, so a group in florida made this mini tournament right? But then like the guy playing mcdonald didn’t show! So the g-“

“Have you heard about any suspicious… Battle like shit from the angels? Ted Danson man?” Beelzebub interrupted, swilling a hand in the air and cocking her head at him almost suspiciously.

Gabriel had to act fast, he’d expected his question to be passed off as quickly as the other demons’ questions had, he hadn’t pre-planned many stories yet and it was hard to get around that angelic trait of not lying. He scraped his mind for a fact that could be interpreted as something aggressive. “... I heard rumblings about troops of angels re-manning the asteroid belt at 3 key points. All armed, some transporting heavy loads of equipment…” It was a long shot, angels were returning there to hand in their weapons for safekeeping, though they were guarded fortresses as well so if this escalated he was sure any angels there would be mostly safe.

“The asteroid belt is an integral part of our transportation systems.” Beelzebub muttered thoughtfully. Gabriels eyebrows raised a little, he hadn’t known that before. Of course it was possible for parts of hell to exist unseen in the same spaces as heavenly space fortresses. They all existed on different parallel planes of reality. Theoretically, Gabriel‘s and Beezlebubs offices could exist in the exact same places but on different planes. “Perhaps they want to cut us off… Where did you hear about this Ted?”

The disguised angel hesitated and shrugged. It wasn’t a lie if he said nothing.

“I wanna know more about it Ted-” Beelzebub shook her head. “No- who the fuck are you? What’s your name again?”

“Ted’s good.” He replied slowly. He wasn’t sure if she was suspicious or genuinely spoke to demons she didn’t know the names of this way.

“Turning over a new leaf, I like it.” The blond woman nodded. Everybody seemed confused but her.

“And I’ve not seen you before because?” Beelzebub questioned. “Normally I’ll remember a demon that’s mildly competent.”

“Been away.” Gabriel replied with another shrug, then added some security. “Was a woman for a bit. Wouldn’t’ve recognised me.”

Azazel lent forward in her chair. “What made you pick silver-fox this time?”

“A what?”

Beelzebub interrupted. “Well _ thank you _ for coming back when you bloody felt like it. Dunno if you noticed, but Armageddon didn’t happen so now as payback for your however many years of dalliance, I wanna see you earning your keep by finding out more about what the angels are doing. Got it?”

Gabriel could hardly believe what he was hearing, but he found himself smiling. “Y’alright.” He drawled.

“Bring me something good tomorrow and I won’t decorate the hallway with your organs alright? The length of your intestines could probably cover sector C don't you think?” Beelzebub looked at Hastur who shrugged.

“Might be short a few meters but… Yeah.”

“Great,” Beelzebub peered up at Gabriel casually. “Better impress me cus I’m already impressed by the thought of that decoration.”

Gabriel met the demons gaze and wondered how he should play this. Wave it off and act dumb or look frightened.

Luckily he didn’t have to because Azazel was interrupting. “Speaking of, I’m doing a bash in sector c at the end of the week, coming?”

“A bash?” Beelzebub retorted, eyes narrow. “Az we can’t put sector C out of action for two weeks-“

“It’s a post-armageddon bash, and I’m not asking, im warning you it’s happening, ok?”

Beelzebub sighed. “You can have your  _ bash _ . Clean up faster then a week ok? Sector c will be out of action for just one week.”

“12 days,”

“It doesn't take 12 days to clear an area.”

“12 days, unless you don’t want the computers replaced.”

“10 days.”

“12 days.”

“Alright everyone bugger off.” Beelzebub adjourned the meeting effectively, and all the demons muttered and wandered out of the room. Being by the doorway it was easy for Gabriel to take the head of the crowd and get out of there as soon as possible. But it proved not to be that easy in fact.

“Hey Michael Sheen! That means you Ted.” Azazel planted a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and held him back.

“Who the fuck is Michael Sheen?” Gabriel finally retorted, tired of her naming him after people he didn’t recognise.

She seemed caught off guard for a moment and shrugged. “Some dude, played a white haired dj in Tron legacy.”

“Ah, acting type?”

“Yeah welsh prick.“

They waited for the rest of the demons to knock past him, Beelzebub giving him a sideways glance as well as she left, before Gabriel could turn and look at the second prince of Hell. “What?”

“Lilith babe? Where did you get your hair done like that?”

Gabriel bristled but controlled himself as best he could. “Not Lilith.”

“Eisheth?”

“NOT a succubus,”

“Fine, fine keep your secrets. Just tell me where you got the hair perfect like that.”

Gabriel looked up thoughtfully. Perhaps he should’ve messed it up more, he’d been vain settling at just turning it white. But it turned out this was actually working to his advantage. He gently removed his hat and ran his fingers through it, looking back at Azazel. “... I did it myself.”

“NO.” She gasped.

“... Yes?”

“Can I touch it?”

“Uhh-“

Before Gabriel could consider if this was normal demonic behaviour or not, her hand reached up to his head. “Whoaa it really stays so neat.” She exclaimed happily. Gabriel felt disturbed by the gentle hiss he could hear from her baggy pink tracksuit sleeve. “I want short hair. Would you do my hair like yours?”

“I’m not becoming your hairdresser. Miracle it yourself.”

She froze and looked at him, lowering her arm and cocking her head. The little red and black snake head that poked out from her sleeve and lazily wrapped around her hand startled Gabriel a little. “Excuse me? That’s not really a choice you have bro.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure what Azazel was capable of these days, but as a demon he’d be expected to know what her threats meant, and considering how he’d watched her find Crowleywith a flick of her wrist, he didn’t like the idea of her finding him later in the same way. “... I mean… Sure...”

“That’s better, bring me a Latte before the party next week and let's do it. You know how I like it!” She smiled and quickly skipped away, already back on her phone.

Though he would arguably be doing good by taking those dreadlocks off a white girls head. He didn’t know how to cut hair, or use products, nor would he be expected to, if he was a demon he’d be expected to “curse-miracle” it. But of course all of his would be holy, and around a prince of hells head.

“Yeah… ok…  _ Fuck. _ ”

————————————

When Gabriel finally returned to his office, blipping in behind his desk and shoving the clothes he’d stolen from hell into the bottom draw of his table, he felt electric with excitement. His mind wizzed like it hadn’t for hundreds of years with ideas and plans he could put in motion.

If he wasn’t supposed to do this then why had it been so easy? Why did it feel so damn good? Aside from the haircut, which he’d figure out later, everything had gone perfectly! He’d looked Beelzebub in the eye without a flinch! Oh God was going to be proud of him, what they hadn't been able to accomplish in 6,000 years he felt like he could now organise within a matter of weeks. Oh the praise he’d get! So he could finally feel like the Archangel he was meant to be again.

Not that he needed praise, not at all angels shouldn’t work for praise. Though really they all very clearly did. Because no angel ever smiled wider than when he dished out the occasional praise. Even to Michael.

He removed the glamour on his appearance and suppressed a chuckle as he stalked over to his mapping table. He held one hand to his chin, a finger curled over his lips to cover his guilty smile as he swept his free arm over the table, bringing Hell into view. He couldn’t argue that his map of hell made any more sense now, since it was still a mess, but it was definitely  _ clearer  _ to him now that he’d actually been inside of it. He couldn’t believe that he’d actually never been there before, it was probably the only part of reality that he hadn’t at least passed through before.

It was all new! New, new, new!

Everything he’d found so important over the last century was so  _ futile,  _ so  _ meaningless  _ beyond what he was doing now. So  _ boring.  _ This was a much better use of his time. He sneered at the abandoned plans lining his walls in files. He’d hated filling those damn papers in anyway, he could keep everything in his head anyhow, especially now he worked by himself, for himself. This was his new mission now.

He started naming the otherwise blank rooms in Hell, didn’t matter what he named them as long as he understood it until he found out their names, if they had any.

All he had to do was find out why Hell wasn’t attacking Heaven despite failed Armageddon, and then give them that push they needed. He’d found out why they weren’t attacking already, which was “they’re as lazy and uninspired as the angels are,” so all he had to do was stir up some trouble, maybe instill some fear of heaven, some threats, some woes. Get them to lash back against some paranoia that they were in danger. His only problem was avoiding Michael’s “Back-channel”.

He was lucky he knew about it at all, after Michael had finally admitted to having one during their inquest into Aziraphale’s sins. It had proven itself surprisingly efficient and useful. And entirely secret. Michael was flawless in her execution and he was the one who knew that the most.

He had a plan for the backchannel already. He’d share some rumours around;

“I heard that there was an angel going around sector B offering salvation to anybody who could get him a container of hellfire. I don’t think he can actually do it though. It’s been causing riots because everybody’s trying to break into the vaults for the best stuff...”

“I heard that Balam had made a pact with an Angel over something… He’s promising the Angel that he’ll foretell him of any failures he might make and will correct them, and in return the Angel’s going to get Balam a holy crown so that he can overthrow Beelzebub.”

They had to be very particular lies. They couldn’t be more useful to hell to keep secret, otherwise a Demon wouldn’t tell Michael about it. They had to be roundabout enough that they could be easily confusing and hard to prove if they were true, and each of his rumours had to be things he’d heard from somebody else, so that he would never be sort out as the source. Then he just had to wait and see which of the rumours Michael brought him. Simple, as long as he could remember which versions of rumours he told who. Perhaps rather then remembering demons names he could just identify them by the animal they had on them? Since they didn’t look like the types that would throw their names about to any one stranger.

He could get Sam to do whatever he wanted, make excuses for him while he was gone, or help him spread discord. Though… he had to make sure he could trust the boy first. Maybe get him a gift, make him trust Gabriel entirely. Shouldn’t be too hard, the boy already seemed to look up to him even though he’d challenged him.

Gabriel hesitated over the table, the delicate light of the maps gently dancing across his face locked in thought.

It would be great if he could sow some extra discord in heaven too… maybe if not to start them fighting, just to keep them on edge… it could be good motivation for his troops too, so he didn’t have to listen to any more complaints from them. And if he could steal some weapons from heaven and get them into hell for demons to wield that would also cause some outrage. But it was hard even for an angel to remove a few weapons from the stores without the proper paperwork… just thinking about that tired him out, but there were a few difficult ways.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Sir?”

Looking up, he saw an angel he vaguely recognised. He was a rather short angel, portly, with combed back hair and a pair of thick-rimmed, round spectacles. Before Gabriel could ask, the angel nodded with a reassuring smile. “Book keeping. I’ve just procured a few documents for you to sign. Just logs for the reassignment of Angels after the war has been cancelled and all that. For the archives.”

Gabriel blinked and remembered what people usually came to his room for.  _ Boring… paperwork _ . “Yes, yes. Just put them on this table.” He ushered the man in, standing up straight and swiping hell away with one hand, the table returning to its usual visuals of… well all of reality.

The book keeper wandered over and hesitated when he looked at the table. “Are you sure this table is for writing on? It’s beautifully made.”

“Put down the papers.” Gabriel assured in a no-nonsense tone. “D’you have a pen?”

“Yes, yes.” Flustered, he placed the papers neatly on the ever changing table and handed Gabriel an elegant fountain pen. Angels hadn’t quite been able to move on to ball-points yet, but at least it wasn't a feather quill. “This is to agree that all weapons assigned for the battle have been replaced within the stores if they are not to be kept, I double checked those for you myself. This paper is for the dismissal of extra angels to the soul acceptance department, since humanity isn’t dying out they won’t be needed. This one-“

“Yeah, yeah, yep-“ Gabriel diligently signed each one, only half listening to what the box ticker was saying, though he was relieved to hear of the duties he was being spared from.

“- and lastly for the dismissal of virtues given to healers for some extra miracle buffering. They’ll be glad to keep their powers to themselves.”

“Is Aziraphale on that list?” Gabriel skimmed his eyes over the disappointingly short list of angels being effectively demoted.

“I… don’t believe so.” The Angel replied slowly. “I thought he was dead?”

Gabriel slapped the papers onto the table, holding his breath in irritation for a moment. “Not exactly.” He growled. Perhaps this explained why the angel had been able to survive _hellfire. _“_Why_ is Aziraphale not on this list anyway? Surely the powers should have been removed _before _executing him? Are there any powers assigned to him that I don’t know about?!”

The stout Angel wasn’t swayed by Gabriel’s anger, which just irritated him more. “It’s not that simple Gabriel, we have to collect many permissions from various Dominions and Virtues before an angel can be demoted, without discrimination or bias. Sometimes we have to get a signature from the Angel in question, as we did from 3 of those on this list of 4,”

Gabriels stunned disbelief was interrupted by a moment of curiosity. “What did that one angel do to warrant not getting a say in his own demotion?”

“During the commotion that was Armageddon and the bending of reality. That Angel used his miracles to divert a bands touring equipment so that he could attend their last performance before the world ended. I believe the band was called ‘Caravan Palace’”

Gabriels fury bubbled up like a cauldron. “And Aziraphale fucking STOPPED ARMAGEDDON!! Why weren’t his powered revoked immediately?!”

The short angel stared up at Gabriel undaunted. “We can’t find his commanding Dominion,”

“... Who?!”

“His Dominion sir, Zadkiel. We got a signature from Netzach, we just need a signature from Zadkiel and yourself.”

Gabriel blinked in disbelief. “I thought… I was solely in charge of Aziraphale, from when he served me in the garden. What the hell does Zadkiel have to do with this? He's been missing for centuries.”

“I believe Aziraphale was assigned to him during his time in Rome for a forgiveness job, and he was never removed from being under his jurisdiction, so Aziraphale technically works for both of you.”

The Archangel was leaving long pauses between his responses to control his anger. “Then remove him from that duty.”

“Zadkiel is also an Archangel, you can’t undermine his authority since it’s equal to yours. We would need his signature.”

“And if he’s absent?”

“I could file a bypass, but Zadkiel was under a Thrones jurisdiction and it can take at least 6 months to gain an audience with him.”

“...And that's it? That’s all our options?”

“Well I can pass an override if an Angel we’ve been needing the signature for has been gone for over a century-“

“Good now we’re talking-“

“But I’m afraid to inform you that Zadkiel sent Michael a postcard from Hawaii 32 years ago. So we’ll have to wait another 48 years before we can claim his unresponsive status has been a century at least.”

The silence was rigid and sharp. “Was that all the signatures you needed from me?” Gabriel growled.

“Yep!” The book keeper replied almost brightly, as he picked up the pages and straightened the edges on the desk with a tap. “And lastly I’ll need Michael’s signature. Do you know when she’ll be around?”

“She’s visiting Raphael, those visits can always go on a bit. But it’s been a while so you could probably wait for her outside.”

“Right.” The short man responded, shoulders lowering a little in telltale disappointment. Nevertheless he tipped his head to Gabriel and shuffled outside.

Gabriel watched him go and carefully scrutinised the man. Frumpy and clumsy looking like Aziraphale, but he took his job very seriously, which the Archangel always respected, though Gabriel preferred those that picked up swords. He wondered if this one would be willing to pick up a sword if he had to.

He was diligently waiting for Michaels arrival, but was writing on the clipboard, little notes and then flicked to the next page, then the next. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen the man put any other papers on the board, and he hadn’t seen a space for any other signatures but the Archangels and one Dominion.

The Archivist took a quick glance around, and then left his post by Michaels office.

Gabriel suddenly took off after him.

“I’m sorry, Prevuil isn’t it?” He questioned, clapping a hand on the mans shoulder and making the angel jump. Gabriel was about twice the archivists height and was quickly loading up every memory he had of the angel.

“Honoured to be remembered Gabriel,” the short man drawled. “We do see each other somewhat often.”

“Aha, busy week, busy 11 years.” The Archangel muttered, putting his hands in his pockets and trying to get a glance at the papers. The book keeper had pressed them close to his chest.

He’d seen Gabriels glance and carefully stepped backwards, Gabriel followed him around like a shark until they were carefully stepping around each other in a circle. “Busy 11 years indeed, though it didn’t amount to much. Your party ended up having a rather weak turn-out didn’t it?”

Gabriel wasn’t going to take this kind of mockery from a jumped up book worm. Especially after how much he’d already been pissed off. “How’s your retirement been going Prev?”

“Very well, I visited the moon and catalogued its craters,” The librarian laid the sarcasm on thick. ”I even found a suitable one to put all of your statues in after Armageddon, even the pretty ones with their breasts out.”

“Wonderful work, I’m sure Metatron is glad you’re around to do the little things like that. Do you dust your old chair for him?”

“Oh yes and I file the thumbtacks to be extra sharp for him too.”

“If you keep it up maybe they’ll even let you shine his shoes. I mean, gods ex-scribe needs to earn his keep somehow right?”

“Oh I earn my keep.” The angel snapped.

“It must be disappointing that the rest of us aren’t going to battle to leave you to your collections of a more pornographic nature.”

“Ah but Gabriel you see, those don’t exist.”

“But forgery now that’s another matter entirely.”

Gabriel got the reaction he wanted when the bookkeeper abruptly stopped circling and pulled the papers closer to his chest. “I’m an angel I don’t  _ forge _ anything.”

“Well in that case you won’t mind waiting for Michael because after all she needs to sign those papers herself, in her own hand.”

“I can find her later.”

“Oh look! There she is now.” Gabriel looked up innocently to see her finishing a conversation with Raphael as they walked across heavens long hallways. “Should I call her over?”

“N-no need, I’ll catch her later.” The short man sputtered.

“Why? She’s right here?” He waved a hand and called out to her.

Prevuil panicked and raised a hand. In an instant Gabriel saw the perfect replicas of Michaels signature, and he saw them disappear as the book keeper snapped his fingers. Gabriel was silent as he grinned at the shorter angel. Prevuil noticed and returned the glare, but he was visibly pale now.

“What’s this Gabriel?” Michael was suddenly beside them.

“Ah right on time.” He responded with a smile of innocence. “The archivist here needs your signature on some final reassignment papers.”

Michael sighed and took the papers, giving them the briefest look over and signing each. “Prevuil, why do you look so pale?” She muttered.

“Just uh- l-lots of work wrapping up everything s-so suddenly.” The book keeper was avoiding her gaze.

“Hm, get that stammer sorted.”

“Y-yes Maam.”

“Gabriel, Barachiel was asking after you.”

The Archangel in question blinked and raised his head. “Right of course. I’ll find them right away.”

“Good,” she assessed with a smile, finishing the last signature and handing them back to Prevuil. “That’s all?”

“That's all,” The short man nodded.

Michael seemed to look at the two curiously for a moment before nodding and walking away.

“I… Gabriel listen,” Prevuil began quietly, when Michael was just out of earshot. “It’s not common practise-“

The short man was instantly in the Archangels shadow again. “Which practise? Forgery? Or miracling holy documents?”

Prevuil gulped. “No, I mean-“

“Well if it’s common practise, then these documents could mean anything but the truth,” He carefully pulled some pages back and clicked a finger. A stored weapon disappeared from the log. “And what would we do then? How many years have you been the archivist again?”

“What did you do with that?”

“What did I do? I’m Gabriel are you accusing me of something? Because I’m pretty sure I saw you mircling these less than a minute ago.”

“You can’t-“

“Oh, do you want to take this up with a higher authority Prev? Because we could, but It's my word against… a little librarian who’s still sour about being demoted little over 2000 years ago and is probably away doing whatever he likes with our records with little to no supervision. Who knows what he could be doing down there, right?”

The book keeper said nothing and Gabriel's eyes gleamed with triumph. His speech slowed. “Now let’s say… Zadkiel came home for a visit during the Armageddon confusion, signed a few documents for us.”

“B-before Aziraphale had actually stopped everythi-”

“Prev, I dont give a shit  _ when _ , he signed them. Just that he  _ did _ . Ok?” Gabriel's voice dripped with such terrifying malice that Prevuil gulped.

“I don’t remember what his signature looks like-“

“Then nobody else does either, do they?”

Prevuil shook his head.

“ _ Good.  _ We’ll have a little chat later right?” He gave the short man a gentle pat on the shoulder, before quietly stalking away.

He wasn’t sure which weapon he’d removed from the lists, but he’d soon find out, and it would be damn useful.

Now he needn’t ever worry about paperwork ever again.

——————————

“So what was Gabriel's office like? Was it golden and grand and had trophies like the leviathans head on his walls?”

“Uh no, he said he hadn’t actually been a part of fighting the leviathan, actually. There wasn’t much in the room except for a big old marble table and walls full of folders.”

“What do you think he has in the folders?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t look!”

“Maybe its a list of his enemies, both angels and demons.”

“Can an angel have angel enemies?”

“Gabriel can.”

“Yeah Ben do you even remember whose office you were in?”

“Pff yeah, I mean, sure-“

“Gabriel can have enemies, anyone who decided to talk back at him.”

“Anyone who’s missed a report or been late to a meeting.”

“Well we shouldn’t be late to meetings anyway, nor impolitely early.”

“Fashionably late doesn’t count either.”

“I think Gabriel secretly has a superiority complex,”

“We know that, but he shouldn’t have one.”

“Do you think he’s a flawed angel? Secretly flawed for years like Aziraphale was?”

“No way, he couldn't be. Aziraphale was seriously flawed. Gabriel is clean, smart,-“

“Rude, impatient-“

“He hasn't failed a mission-“

“Apart from armageddon!”

“Consistently in peak physical condition-“

“He’s got a great business card-“

“What? Have you seen that?“

“I heard he’s exceptional at squash.”

“Why would he play squash?”

“It’s the only sport that other angels can keep up with him in. So I heard that he only plays people at it to be polite and level the playing field, giving people the chance to say ‘Gabriel and I played squash and I enjoyed it’”

“You mean even his squash playing is a diplomatic tool?”

“Squash  _ is  _ a diplomatic tool, it doesn’t exist for anything else.”

“What did he do before squash was invented?”

“Backgammon,”

“Chess?”

“Whiff whaff,”

“Rugby?”

“No it couldn’t be a team thing, and he’d play football.”

“Soccer?”

“No football.”

“Poker? Gambling?”

“Strip poker!”

“What is wrong with you? Not Gabriel! Though actually... he could be very-“

“I’m still not clear on which football we were talking about-“

“I’d say Gabriel gambles, like James Bond.”

“What’s James Bond?”

“I think he’s a famous human playboy. There are lots of jealous guys that try to shoot him but he’s really good at dodging them.”

“Maybe James Bond is actually Gabriel in disguise which is why nobody can actually shoot him.”

“That would be incredible but no.”

“Benjamin are you going to ask Gabriel about his playboy activities?”

_ “ _ What?  _ No _ ,”

“Could we ask Gabriel to teach us how to gamble?”

“No! I don’t think that’s a thing Angels can do can they?” Benjamin retorted, leaning back in his seat and staring at his friends.

They were all Guardian Angels, the Guardians lived closer the the humans because their work required knowing a lot more about them, they’d also picked up lots of human habits. For instance right now they were meeting up for lunch, not so much to eat, though one of them had brought a few strawberries to try out, but more as part of a routine of meeting up once a day for a break and a chat.

There were three of them sat around the little table of berries in a rose garden, Benjamine on a bench and two other angels sat opposite him, prepared for interrogation. They were all around 70 years old, and had known each other for around that length of time as well.

There was Polly, another Angel born in britain at the same hospital as Ben had been sent to. Though he was a couple of years older than him, and had spent more time healing war wounds, so she was happily sat in the antiwar camp herself. But wouldn’t discourage Ben from his dreams. The dangers for an angel were a little less than they were for fragile humans after all. She had perfectly curled black hair and bright blue eyes, and could blend in with a wartime poster girl’s portrait if she stood still next to one long enough. But only if you could get her to smile, which was difficult. But she was always energetic and curious.

But the second friend was the eldest. He’d been born to save as many as he could from the Boston Molassacre. An incident involving a burst tank of maple syrup spreading two million gallons of sticky molasses into the north end of Boston proper. He saved as many children as he could, though there was one child he’d been unable to help, that child had named him Pa, and they hadn’t had time to learn why. So everyone affectionately called him Pat, Patty, or Papa.

Pat was a gentle soul, looking as though he was of asian decent, with black hair and dark eyes. He was a tad overweight but that wasn’t a problem in his line of work. He’d come to their hospital to help men with shellshock, though he still worked best with children. Since he worked with kids, some joked that he even looked like a big child, but though he was perhaps a little gullible, he didn’t have the mind of a child. Because it was Pat that was prying into the teachings of gambling.

“Why not? We don’t have material possessions but there must be  _ something _ we can gamble with.”

“There’s nothing wrong with gambling clothes unless there’s lust involved.” Polly argued, holding up a strawberry. “And angels don’t do lust. Everything should be fine.”

“That feels risky though…” Ben murmured, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“What about dares?”

“What do you mean by dares?” Pat turned to look at Polly curiously.

“Suppose… If I lose, I’ll take over your next duty.”

“Ohh that’s a high price. Looking after a ward could last a whole human lifetime.”

“Yeah but there must be some lower stakes options. Just for example.”

“If… You win, I’ll get you tickets to see Hamilton.” Ben offered.

“That’s a material possession right?”

“No! It’s tickets to see an experience. You can’t own a musical.”

“You still win, a  _ thing _ .”

“What’s your boundary between  _ things _ and things you  _ do _ Polly?”

“How about.” Pat interrupted, leaning forward in his chair. “You win, and I’ll go drop an egg on Michael’s head?”

“Oh we’re doing pranks now?” Polly laughed. “You want to fall if you’re going to drop an egg on Michael, you won’t last a second.”

“Well that’s a dare right?” Pat defended. Ben was laughing too. “I lose your bet, and I have to go do something awful. It can’t always be that I’d get you something good.”

“Ok, how about rock, paper, scissors?” Ben questioned. “Is that a gamble?”

“If you rock, paper, scissors an order you don’t want to do to get another angel to do it. That would be shirking your duties right?” Pat countered.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Archangels rock, paper, scissors before.”

“That’s because we’re Archangels kid.” A hand clapped Ben's shoulder and he yelped in surprise. His friends also jumped because Gabriel had materialized out of nowhere, and there had been no build up to the surprise for them to have enjoyed. “Benjamin!”

“G-Gabriel?” Ben stuttered.

“You’re hired. This way.” And he grabbed the boys wrist, dragging him away from his friends who were only just registering what was happening.

“I- I’m hired?! Where are we going?” Ben was watching his friends shrink into the distance, waving and shouting hurried congratulation. He tried to find his feet and look up at his new boss. “Right now?”

“Right now. Effective immediately.” Gabriel was looking around the space for a corner for them to disappear behind. Eventually they slipped behind a pillar, appearing inside a crater on the moon. It wasn't the best, it felt excessive but Gabriel supposed that the view of earth shining behind them was somewhat ceremonial.

He turned to Ben who was looking around in confusion and sputtering like a failing car engine.

Gabriel clapped his hands to grab his attention and beamed. “Congratulations! You must be overjoyed. Now moving on.”

“M-moving on? I- Yes! I can’t-“

“I’ll be teaching you personally, to get you up to speed as quickly as possible.”

“Y-you?! Personally?”

“Why not? You’re already a trained healer, you’re more skilled than most, your training should be tailored. You’re better than just any old soldier.”  _ You’re probably useless and a pain in the ass but you know saying that won’t help me. _

“M-me? Oh Gabriel thank you so much! I won’t-“

“Yeah, yeah I got it.” Gabriel was already reaching into his breast pocket and thought of whatever weapon he’d crossed off that sheet. “This is your- oh,” he looked at what he’d drawn out in disappointment. “A staff,”

“A STAFF!”

“Uh yes! A- um, deadly staff.” Benjamin rushed forward and reached to grab it but Gabriel held it aloft and placed a palm on the boys chest. “A-ah, hold it son, stand still.”

The young angel obeyed.

Gabriel was still processing. He probably wasn’t the best pick for teaching the boy in how to use a staff. Those were well… gentler weapons than swords or spears. But if Ben liked it and could channel his healing powers through it as well, he admitted that it made sense. But it was time to use some word play.

“This,” he began, lowering the pure white rod between them. “Is very special.”

He smiled at the desired effect of Ben's eyes opening wide with excitement.

“Because this is a gift from me. Trainees normally borrow equipment, but this is yours to have, like a cherub’s flaming sword.”

“To keep?”

“To keep, you’re not a guardian angel anymore.” The boy reached for the staff but Gabriel held it away for a moment longer. “This is best kept between you and I right? Because our mission now is top secret, like this staff, you have to keep both secret.”

“Secret?”

“Exactly.” Then Gabriel slowly handed him the staff and rested his hand on top of it. “And this staff is blessed by my authority, as long as you weild it you’ll know what to do, and you can’t go wrong. It will teach you as much as I will.”

“You blessed it?” Ben gasped. “Yourself?”

“Sure did kid.” Gabriel beamed again.

“Why?”

“It was a brave speech you gave me. Inspirational really got me thinking,” At least that part was true. “You proved yourself to be very brave,”  _ Also true, brave like a fool is brave,  _ “So I trust you.” _ Trust you to like the plain gift I’m giving you and believe everything I tell you afterwards. _

Ben paused a moment longer, looking on the verge of tears and then hugging the staff tightly. “I won’t let you down!”

He grinned and patted the boy on the shoulder. “Good, good! Now first, some self defence.”

“Self defence?” Ben watched Gabriel step back from him and reach inside his jacket again.

“What did you think? You’re not using that thing to prop up tomato plants,” He took pleasure in slowly pulling his broadsword out, with a flick of his wrist he spun it and it shimmered in the earthlight as he took a stance.

Ben hesitated again. “In your best suit?”

“Benjamin who are you talking to?”

“Um Gabri-“

“Who the fuck are you talking to,”

“Archangel Gabriel.”

“That's right. Just try and hit me.  _ I’m not worried about my suit. _ ”

———————————-

“Hello, you’ve reached Anthony J Crowley's answer machine. You know what to do- do it with style. *bleeep*”

“Hello Crowley, sorry for calling at this hour-“

*Clunk* “Yes? What is it Angel?”

“Oh! Uh, yes, um- you know how electric things work?”

“Uh… Yeah sure I do.”

“Brilliant, well uh- some of the lightbulbs in my shop have inexplicably gone out, and I can’t quite manage to fix it.”

“What like… you can't figure out how to miracle it or…?”

“Seems ridiculous doesn’t it? But, yes I suppose so.”

“I’ll be right over.”

It had been a couple of days since their wine night, which had ended up lasting for almost 24 hours in itself, but Crowley was ready to jump over at any moment rather then hang in his empty room when he didn’t have Hell to answer to anymore.

He arrived at the bookshop 10 minutes later, and felt shaken simply by the fact he didn’t think he’d ever seen the place completely unlit. Sure, Aziraphale prefered things being cozily dim rather than harshly bright, but you could always see what was in front of you.

Crowley fished out his phone and swept the shop with the flashlight. Eventually spotting Aziraphale looking rather frazzled in the back, balancing on a rickety wooden stool. He’d removed his jacket but stubbornly kept his waistcoat. His hair was even more unkempt than usual, but when he turned to see Crowley's flashlight his smile was brighter than ever.

“Ah! Crowley my dear, thank you for coming so quickly.” He fussed, wobbling as he stepped down from the stool and held his hands out to Crowley. They hesitated in the awkward way when you’re not sure whether to hug or to wave at a respectable “no homo” distance. The angel ended up patting a hand on Crowley's shoulder and stepping to his side to wrap an arm round the demons shoulders, and gesture to the lightbulb with his free hand. So technically it was a half hug. Crowley rolled his eyes but Aziraphale couldn’t see it in the dark. “Was wondering if you could lend a hand.”

“Right,” The redhead looked up curiously at the lightbulb and cocked his head. He raised a hand and half heartedly snapped, not expecting much. But both immortals blinked in surprise as the lightbulb blinked back on without so much as a spark. “Oh! Well uh…” he looked around the rest of the shop and snapped his fingers again and the rest of the shop blinked back into life.

“Oh! Well that was… odd.” Aziraphale murmured thoughtfully, he was smiling but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, as if he was troubled by something. “Very strange indeed, though I do thank you for coming to fix them, you've always known more about the certain… technological quirks-“

“You alright Angel?” The demon interrupted softly.

“Oh yes, yes of course.” The blond man murmured, pulling the hands he was wringing apart and nodding. He looked away and nodded again, seeming lost in thought. “Yes.” He fidgeted and stepped over to the table he’d scattered light bulbs around on. His hands hovered over them and shifted around like he was thinking about clearing them but he’d keep losing focus and couldn’t decide which one to pick up first. The demon watched him in stunned silence, cogs spinning in his head as he tried to decipher the angels action. But before he could reach his epiphany, Aziraphale waved a hand and grabbed his blazer off a chair. “Bah- how about a usual visit to the ritz dear? As thanks.”

“Really?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. “I mean  _ yes  _ but I didn’t save your cat from a tree or something.”

“I don’t have a cat?”

“A metaphorical cat.”

“I don’t really  _ like _ cats-“

Crowley couldn’t help but smile as he interrupted. “Nevermind that, let's go then.”

The sun was only just setting on the horizon as the couple left the bookshop together, giving them ample time to eat when they got there.

Aziraphale was talking non-stop about seemingly anything. Crowley was used to their conversations being somewhat one sided when Aziraphale was explaining things to him, but this was different. His questions were rhetorical, he strung one topic on to another- if Crowley did find something to ask about, the angel would brush him off or look like he hadn’t heard him at all. It wasn’t malicious, he seemed genuinely distracted. So Crowley could do nothing but watch Aziraphale as they walked and gently wait for the true topic to arrive, when The angel was ready to tell him what was going on.

They arrived at the Ritz as usual, proceeded to the lift as usual, but were halted unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry sirs we’re fully booked.” The waiter apologised, blocking them from entering. “Usually you would have to book months in advance to get in here, there’s nothing I can do.” The boy was clearly new and didn’t recognise them as regulars yet. He looked like he was a second away from saying  _ “you do realise this is the RITZ right? You don't just get in off the street.”  _ And for that look, Crowley took 80% off of the young man's Iphone battery.

“But that- well,” Angel was clearly flustered, appeared almost visibly shaken. As if having been told the Queen had died. “Would you mind checking again?” He asked as politely as he could. Crowley could see him wringing his hands again, and drumming his fingers against his palms as he hid them to his chest. And with that, Anthony finally began to accept the terrible thoughts that had been running through his head since he’d arrived at the shop.

The young waiter held his tongue, and after a moment of staring, made a polite second check of the tables free on his screen. Aziraphale’s eyes were flicking around the other tables he could see inside, waiting for a family to stand up urgently and have to leave for some emergency. Beyond the sound of dining and the soft keys of the piano playing on the other side of the restaurant, it was deafeningly silent. No chairs scraping against the floor as people rushed out, no breaking glasses or bursts of energy and yells of surprise as a nasty text message or phone call caught their attention.

As the angel watched the crowd, the demon watched his angel, as if nothing else was there. And as the seconds passed and Aziraphales panicked twitching was subdued by eventual resignation, Crowley felt like his guts had been wrenched out.

After what seemed like an age, the waiter looked up again. “I’m sorry, there’s no-“

“D-Don’t worry we… Thank you for checking, we’ll just-“

Finally Crowley tapped his foot.

There was a yelp from the other side of the restaurant and a well dressed man practically sprinted past them, followed by a dolled up girl calling desperately after him. “Looks like we’re in luck.” Crowley stated simply, clutching Aziraphale’s hand and guiding them past the shocked waiter.

“W-wait Crowley,” Aziraphale protested weakly, his voice only seemed half present and he was barely dragging his eyes away from the floor. “You didn’t have to-“

“He was cheating on his wife anyway.” Crowley clarified as they reached the table, there were two fresh glasses of champagne left there untouched. “And yes, we’re eating here tonight.”

“But-“ Aziraphale was interrupted by Crowley politely pushing him into his seat. The angel went silent and watched the demon quickly take his own seat and practically finish the champagne glass off like a shot. Even when the demon was finished the angel didn’t move, he was sitting staring at Crowley, his shoulders hunched as though he felt they didn’t belong there.

Crowley slowly put an elbow on the table and rest his chin on his hand as he stared back. He felt like a distracting story wouldn’t be appreciated, he felt like silence wasn’t appreciated either but it felt like the lesser of two evils.

“I…” it was the first sound Aziraphale had uttered in a full minute. And was promptly followed by more silence as he seemed to choke up. He sniffed and clasped his hands in front of them on the table.

_ “I suppose we were expecting this to happen eventually, just not so soon.” _

Crowley knew what he’d meant to say, and he needn’t say anything in return. What was there to say? He gently put one hand on top of Aziraphales to let him know he understood. The angel barely registered it but once he realised it was there, they slowly clasped their hands together.

Refills, a slice of cake and a bowl of vanilla ice cream arrived, which Aziraphale knew he hadn’t ordered himself. He picked at the cake with his free arm, the other hand still safely in Crowleys. The icecream sat untouched in the centre of the table. They watched as it slowly melted, and there was nothing the angel could do about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you’re all feeling uncomfortable.


End file.
